Solo winter camping trip with snow in New Zealand

Wednesday morning, 8.30, about to head off on a hunting trip. Bruce is up here somewhere. He's not happy, he's got to spend the day in the kennel. Bruce, where are you? Are you around? It's pretty cold. Oh, there's Bruce, he's coming. Pretty cold. I'm going to tent at the tops hopefully. Might be too much snow. There's Bruce skulking his way here because he knows he's going in his kennel soon. Bless him. Anyway, fingers crossed, all's okay. I've got my EPIRB, I've got all my gear. Back of the car, fully laden down. Boots, rifle and pack. That's just a Tonka 90 pack. I've got a tent in there, sleeping mat, everything, rain cover. It all works for a snowy, extremely cold top trip. Wish me luck. So on the way to hunting, come through Renwick. I'm now on the main road going towards St Arnard and there is quite a bit of snow on the peaks and coming down a bit. It's a fair bit there and I'm not even near where I'm going yet but on the left hand side on the ranges there's snow down to the down to the bush line so this would be an interesting hunt to say the least. I've got all my gear but it's going to be cold. I don't have snowshoes but I shouldn't need them. It's so windy up there but it shouldn't blow any snow away anyway and ice isn't a problem up there. So fingers crossed. Wish me luck. So I'm almost at St Arnard and there's quite a lot of snow up there. Thicker than I thought it was. There's down onto the tree line as well right into the bush. I'm on the other side of that range that I'm looking at now but fingers crossed I'm even going to be able to make it up there. I only get as far as the hut. Here we go. I'm off. Put on my gear. Got my rifle. Heading off into the bush. It's just started raining and it's cold and this rain will be falling as snow up where I'm going so this is going to be quite grim but let's go for it. Well about halfway up Jamieson Ridge. Pretty knackering. It's been a lot of rain here. The path is a little stream. Hopefully the weather holds. I was just sleeting a second ago and I bumped into another hunter. I was coming down the hill he said it was pretty snowy up there and it's probably not possible to tent at the tops because it's covered in snow so it looks like I'm gonna probably go straight to the hut when I do get up there. It's gonna be pretty crappy either way. I think the snow is quite deep there but hey-ho is what it is. We'll see how it goes. I'll record again when I start seeing some snow on the ground. So first sign of snow. It looks like it's melted a fair bit. There's nothing else around. It's quite clear up there. It's cold. I'm baking because I've been walking up solidly for an hour and a half or whatever it is. I've got my massive pack on which has got tent and everything else in which I probably won't need now because I'm gonna go in the hut. Bugger. Well it's snowing. Settling on me. It's the path through to carry on. Ups and tops. It's pretty cold. But I've got a plug on. Now the hut is a real pain in the arse to get to. You've got to go all the way out at the bush edge and then walk down through some really gnarly tussocks that are going to be covered in snow. So we'll see what it looks like when I get to the bush edge. I might just tent up at the bush edge because the hut's going to be so crap and it's a crap hut. It doesn't have a fire or anything. Okay the crap hut is better than the best tent but come all this way I've got my tent, my pack, got all my stuff. I'll be warm enough. I just don't fancy bashing all my way down to the hut and then having to bash all my way out again if there's going to be heavy snow coming. I can bail a lot easier from the tent into the bush edge. If things get bad I can always grab my gear and quickly head back into the trees. So we'll see how it goes. I'm almost at the bush edge now so not long. So I've broken out to the top of Jameson Ridge. Now I don't know if you can see right up there it's the mall tops. It's not very clear. I'm getting big clumps of snow landing on me here. It's not very clear but that is the way up to the tops and that looks very clagged in. I don't know how far I'm going to get. It's very snowy but it's nice. Winter wonderland here. There's the path through there along the ridge. I have to go back down and back up again. I know that there's a dip there which is a real gut buster. The sky's a bit grim. Very light snow at the moment. It's meant to stop but then tomorrow I'm probably going to get overnight a big dump of snow tomorrow. I'm not sure my tent can handle a massive dump of snow. Let's see how it goes. Oh and just as I said that it's thinning out. It's starting to snow a bit heavier now. So if you can pick that up. The cloud is coming in. Winter wonderland is now starting to get a bit cloudy. Snow on my back and down the back of my neck. You might be wondering why I'm not wearing a rain jacket because I've just been walking vertically for two and a half hours and you get too hot and too sweaty. But stopping like this you get cold really quickly. So whatever I do I've got to keep moving. We'll see what I'm going to do soon. Hopefully should be about another 20 minutes to Two hours 40 minutes. Just about at the bush fringe edge. Keep getting slammed on by snow and ice. Going down the back of my neck. It's still a slog up but then it's down once I get to the top of this bit of Narnia here. It's pretty stunning. Doesn't get much better than this. Could be a bit warmer. It's pretty cold but as long as you keep moving you're okay. I've got decent gear on. My boots. Probably the most important thing I've got apart from my jacket. Boots are these lower Hunter Extreme GTX. They're insulated. They're very high, way above the ankle. I've got my Hunter Element gravel guards on. So they're gaiters but I don't like big gaiters. I think they're uncomfortable to wear. Gravel guards are much better. So you know having the right gear is a lifesaver here. You can't risk it otherwise. You see stories of people on the tops getting helicoptered out. Hopefully that won't be me. Hope I haven't jinxed it. I've got my PLB, personal locator beacon, in the back of my backpack which is getting covered in snow. It's waterproof. It's a Totonka Bison 90 plus 10. It's a massive backpack because you never know if you get an animal you've got to fill it with a lot of meat. So the most that I could probably carry out would be that this pack could take 40 kilos max. So that's a lot of meat but it's dead weight and it's bloody awful carrying that much meat out. Snow everywhere. I've broken out into the little tussocks. There's a sign that almost at the end when you're hiking and stuff and hunting whatever in New Zealand there are track markers put up by the Department of Conservation. Most of the time they're okay but they're pretty crap. They should upgrade them all to reflective ones. Something a bit more obvious than a tiny thing like that hidden behind that tree. I've got a big piece of snow just fell down my back. They're absolutely no use at night time because they don't reflect. Anyway just one last climb up up there and down again and I'm out of the bush. So just about out that last bit. Oh god that last half hour feels like another two hours. It's brutal. It just keeps going and going and going. Nothing to look at. You're in the trees and I'm out of the bush edge. I don't know if you can make all that out. It's so quiet. I wouldn't be surprised if there are some deer just mulling about. Snow isn't as deep as I thought it would be. It's like an inch. There's some deer tracks here. A bit swampy as you can tell. Stunning. It's eerily quiet. Can't hear a thing. So I've got to find a place to pitch up the tent that's shielded. I think we've got westerly storms coming in. Gale force winds tomorrow. Won't never fun. And potentially a foot of snow. I don't really want to be too far from the bush edge which is there. You see the big marker down there over that ridge. Quite a bit down is the mole hut which is a crap hut and it's a bugger to get to. The tussocks are a nightmare. There's just nothing nice about it whatsoever. I'd rather be in my tent I think and be closer to the bush edge in case things get bad. Then I can get in, in by the trees, get my booby bag and hunker down if it gets that bad. Right, time to find a spot for the tent. You can see some blue sky above me. I haven't found a campsite yet. Still deep in the snow. Snow marker there. Snow markers. So there's westerly storm coming in and that west is behind me so I'm hoping to get on the leeward side of something down there. Just to give me some cover. Either way it's going to be quite grim. When the sun does poke through it is beautiful. But I don't know if you can pick any of that up. All the way down there is a long arduous scramble down and it's harder coming up. I don't want to do that. I'd rather spend the night in the tent. So onwards I might have to walk quite a way to find a really good spot. I don't want to go anywhere where it's too moist. I won't have a water supply but there's enough snow around. I'll just melt snow and get water from that. I've got plenty of fuel. My MSR Dragonfly. White stove, white fuel works better any day up here in these temperatures than butane gas. Almost went. Than butane gas. Even jet boil. Not that good up here. So this is the view at the top of the mound. The sun just about poked through. There is a big storm coming though. There's a tar on there. I think I'm better off with just snow. You can feel, you can hear the wind. It's pretty crunchy. Right, I've got to find a tent site and if I'm on soon because it's bloody freezing up here and it's starting to get cold. So yeah, I need to get a decent spot. Okay, found a spot. Here it is. A bit moist but everything up here is waterproof. Flatten down these tussocks. I'm protected. Got a ridge all the way around. Tree line is right there so that'll absorb some of the shock. West is over there. I'm hoping the wind will come flying over the top here and bounce over to that ridge there. Should leave me pretty protected and beautiful view. East over there. Someone's not there but I'm gonna have my door aiming out there. North and south. Just a bit safer. Right, I better get this tent up. Get a brew on. Get some lunch. Whatever time it is. 2.30. Change out of this gear into some warm weather gear. Warm gear I should say because it's so cold. I don't know what the temperature is. Minus something. Everything's frozen. But there's gonna be lots of snow around for me to get water from to boil up which is great. Well, tent's up. Sky ropes are out. Ready for the storm. This is the newer version of the Hubba Hubba NX. I think it's actually the Hubba Hubba NX 2 for two people. But now they've added these guide attachments here which they didn't have before. You had to secure it only down there so you didn't get that resistance, that strength at the top. So now you've got them at two places. You've got them here above the air vent and you've got them at the top. Basically where it should have been in the first place. So good thing about MSR is they do listen. I think that was one of the main complaints about this and I guess I was just lucky I got the second generation version of the NX which has this. Anyway, all set up. Looking good. It is freezing. You see I've got my jacket on now. This is the Stoney Creek tarn jacket and it's very good. It's not insulated. It doesn't need to be. It's windproof and waterproof and it's tough as anything. Anyway, the sun didn't last. The wind is biting and everything's freezing cold so I need to get a brew on. What I might do, I've got some energy drink. I might just heat that up and drink that hot because that'll be quite tasty and then get some snow and get cranking. Great. Well, I'm about to go and get some water. I've got everything set up in the tent. Unfortunately, I didn't screw the cap on properly. It was not threaded properly so I lost a bit of fuel. Not much though, just a tiny bit but luckily I caught it. I caught it in time else I'd have lost a lot of fuel and then I'd be up shit creek. I reckon I lost about a sixth fuel, quite a bit. I'm getting hot now. I've got everything here. This thing, it's great. It's like a pillow thing but you can kneel on it and it is so warm to kneel on. I've got my Katmandu XT sleeping bag, my liner, which I'll put in later, thermal rest bed. I've even got down there a thermos chair so if I get snowed in I can just sit upright in here. Got all my gear. These things are a miracle. These are my Stoney Creek waterproof gloves. They're so warm and I'm probably going to need to put those on. I'm going to go off and I'm actually going to go over to the tarn and we're going to fill up a couple of these gateway bottles of water. You know, it's not that far to go and get it so I'll just go for a trip now. Okay, just went to get water from the tarn. It's pretty clear. Can you see that? Not bad at all. There's my tent. Quite discreet actually. It's a shame. I'd rather it was orange on the mountaintop so it's easy to see. That is quite difficult. It will be quite difficult to see when it snows. I don't know what the temperature is but my fingers just froze doing that. Luckily these gloves are very warm. I think it's minus five, minus six. The wind chill tonight it's going to be minus 15 but I'll be in the tent in my sleeping bag which I've got a feeling is what I'm actually going to be doing for the next couple of days because as much as that looks quite nice over there I don't think it's going to last. I could get stranded. It could be a bugger. Right, time to get a brew on, get some food get my sleeping bag because unless I'm going for a hunt, which I might, I might go and have a look over there see if there's any animals around. I need to change for that first. You have to prime it which is what I'm doing now. Then gradually you have to get it hot until it flares like that. It sounds like a jet aircraft starting up. Crank it, heating up that energy drink that I've got. Bit of an update. So I decided not to go hunting because completely fogged in now we're in the cloud. This is my clothesline. Pretty cool. Quite a lot of room for a two-man tent. I prefer having a bit of space. All the dry stuff, bits and bobs in there, my ventilation, got my thick socks on, my kneeling pad pillow thing, boots are off now and I'm coming back on again till I leave. Go to the toilet. My headlamp, LED lens. But the coolest thing when you're in a tent, well the most annoying thing when you're in a tent is sitting to eat your food. Now I've just cooked my lunch, dinner, whatever you want to call it. It's backcountry cuisine, sweet and sour lamb and it smelt amazing. So I'm about to cook, I'm about to eat that. But the nightmare is when you want to sit up, you've got to sit up and it's uncomfortable. Especially when you've got your double hips not sticking in your face. So what you do is when you've got the right gear, you make a bed, a chair. So this is my sleeping mat, my Thermarest NeoAir sleeping mat, which is a four season amazing sleeping mat. I mean you can't feel the cold through that at all. Believe me, I'm sitting on the floor now on the snow in my minus 20 sleeping bag and I can feel it. Bloody cold. So what you do is you just deflate the mattress quite a bit so it will fit in the different bits and then you get in and you tighten the straps up and you can sit upright in that. It'll take your whole weight as I will demonstrate. I'm off the floor, I'm sitting on it. Perfect, like that. So supporting me, these straps here support me. It's got a rigid pole structure and now I can sit upright and eat, lean back in total comfort. It's even got a little lumbar because the way it comes up you can adjust that to make a lumbar support in my sleeping bag because it is freezing. I might close that door soon just to keep it a bit toasty in here. There's my, outside my other vestibule is my backpack which I might put the rain cover on just to protect it a bit. I got a text from Noel, shout out to Noel saying about 40 centimeters of snow due but that's in the next three days. I don't know, it might come tomorrow. A foot of snow, that's a lot of snow and this is a three season tent. This is not an alpine four season tent so Christ knows what's going to happen. This MSR Hubba Hubba NX, God it sounds really stupid saying Hubba Hubba. I think I should change that but I'll have to keep flicking it if I can. I've done it quite well. It's quite taut now with these extra guidelines that they didn't use to supply so I'll be like this all night if I hear the snow. What it should do ideally is fall down the sides and then seal up the bottoms of the tent to stop the draft coming through here because I've got the ventilation front and back there anyway so I don't need the bottoms open and then if that happens before the gales come, great, because it will seal it from the gales getting in here. My big worry is snow drift. Deal with that when it comes to it. Right, time for some food. So this is my sweet and sour lamb, my backcountry cuisine. Had a couple of bites. It's very good. Yeah, it's very good. It's quite sweet. I don't know what's in there really. It's lamb, rice or couscous. It looks like rice. Who cares? It's hot and it's tasty. So I'm going to put some music on. I'm going to chill out, listen to a bit of Spotify that I've downloaded because there's no mobile reception here and enjoy my dinner. So it's five o'clock and the light's going. It's going to be dark in about 20 minutes, I think, 30 minutes. Just had my dinner, had some hot chocolate, made quite a mess. Yeah, it's going to be an interesting night. I haven't been in this sleeping bag in this cold before, so this could be interesting. I do have a sleeping bag liner as well. I'll probably use that straight away. This Under Armour stuff, so warm. This hoodie, those guys are good. It's got a middle pocket here that you can join hands. Really warm, toasty. I've got that cushion thing that I use as a pillow. I've got my feet on that because when you're sitting in this chair, obviously the rest of you is then exposed to the floor and the floor is snow and it's absolutely freezing. The air temperature is freezing, so I'll have to sleep with my phone in the sleeping bag and anything else that I want to be able to use because previous experience, the iPhone dies when the temperature gets too cold and it doesn't even have to be very cold for it to die. You've got to keep it warm, you've got to keep it against your person. So I guess it's going to be an early night for me, read a book a bit, play some Patience and then get some sleep and fingers crossed the storm isn't going to be too bad tomorrow. All right, day one over, night night. So it's half 12, midnight. It's cold, really cold. I'm at the limit of this sleeping bag, which is bizarre because it's rated for what I would have thought would be so much colder. Unless Catmandoo have got it completely wrong, I think this sleeping bag isn't much use beyond minus 4, minus 5. It's probably minus 10 outside. It's starting to ice up in the actual tent. So in the corner it's icing up there. It's very icy. Elsewhere you can see it reflecting. So I've got pretty much all my gear on and I'm in the sleeping bag liner and I'm warm in the sleeping bag but I feel cold spots. The back of it, the back side of it, the sleeping bag just isn't up to scratch if you lie on your side. They've obviously baffled it so most of it's on the top, which is pretty stupid if you ask me because who the hell just lies on the back and that's it. Anyway, let's see how it goes all night. But it is cold and I'm wondering if I'm just going to make this a one-nighter because I've got 40 centimeters of snow coming as well. I don't want to be dealing with that and being cold. So fingers crossed. Ten past eight. That was a cold night. I was quite warm in the sleeping bag but you know you've got to leave it fully zipped up, face completely covered. Even if it's a little bit of skin sticking out it would be freezing cold. But this sleeping bag definitely wasn't up to the job I don't think because I've got a liner in it and I'm wearing all my clothes and you can just feel those cold spots in your bum if you turned over or your legs if you're pushed against the material where it compresses it. Anyway, there seems to be some snow on the outside of the tent. I don't know if you can really make that out. So I've got to go and deal with all that and then I think I'll have some breakfast or some breakfast first and then I might bail home because I don't fancy clearing a foot of that off the tent through the day. It'll be quite a boring day. So this probably is going to be my last morning and I'll head home because I don't fancy another night like that either. If I had got my breakfast going, oats, coffee, but this is the outside. It's getting heavier and I knocked all of that snow off and it's already covered again. So I'm gonna have my breakfast and I'm gonna head off because I don't want to deal with this. It's too cold. So everything packed up. You can hear the snow falling. It's quite a lot. It keeps coming. I've got my boots on. I've got my spikes on because it's gonna be slippery out there. I'm going down back down to the car. It's pretty slippery. It was very wet. I could be falling all over the place so I needed my spikes on. Boots were nice and frozen but not too bad. Right, I'm out of here. I've got to get to the bush fringe as quickly as possible because things aren't getting any better. In fact, there's some really thick storm coming in now. I can see a thick storm cloud over there from the west which is what I said would happen. I'm quite hot in here now. I've got my gear on. I'm packing up. I'm starting to sweat a little bit so maybe I'll lose a top. Right, off to the bush pack the tent up. Tent packed up. All in my backpack. Rain cover on. This is my site. You can see there's quite a lot of snow. More coming in now and it's getting onto me so off to the bush. So we got out of here just in the nick of time. It's really clagging in. Snow's coming down. There's the bush line. You can see it in the marker. That wasn't covered in snow yesterday. More like that. That's why I was camped over there just near those trees. A few animals around but not much. Down to the car. Heading down to the car. I've been going about 20 minutes. I feel pretty cold. Just warming up now. Snowing properly now. I've got a bit of down. I'm glad I'm getting out. Dodge. Wouldn't fancy the tent holding up much in those conditions. I've just got to say this Stoney Creek gear. Tarn jacket. These Huntlite waterproof trousers. Unbelievable. So warm. So toasty. I've even taken my gloves off. Stoney Creek gloves which were fantastic at putting the tent down. Didn't get wet at all with my hands. Totally waterproof. Fantastic gloves. You know, Stoney Creek's expensive but it's good gear I have to say. I am warm now. Anyway, I'm gonna march on through. It should take me just under two hours to get down. Depends how many times I fall over because everything's getting covered with snow now. It's a shame. It was meant to be a hunting trip but there's nothing around. No tracks. All the deer have obviously realized what's coming and gone down into the valley, into the bush line. I don't know if one will run out in front of me. Lower down maybe. I'll chamber the rifle. See if I get something. Won't be fun gutting it out in these conditions but you got to do what you got to do to get the meat home. It is beautiful though walking through here. The other thing is it is cold. It's freezing. It was freezing all night and this... I've got the iPhone X. No problem whatsoever. Didn't complain about the cold or anything. Before that I had a 6s plus which was ridiculously sensitive to cold. So I don't know what they've I don't know what Apple have done to the iPhone X. I've got a life proof case on it. Other than that nothing and I don't know what they've done but works in the cold. No problem at all. And it was cold all night. When I picked the phone up this morning it was freezing but it still worked fine. Bizarre. Anyway, catch you somewhere down the track and show you just how beautiful this place is. That's what I'm gonna walk through. Gone up and down the ridge. Still climbing up to get to the top of the ridge and then it's all the way back down. You know you'd love this. Luke, if you're watching this, you'd love this place at this time. I know we've been up decent weather. You'd love it in this because I know you like the cold weather. Maybe not in a tent. Maybe in the One last look before I trodge off. So as I said there's 40 centimeters of snow coming. This is obviously the start of it. None of this was here yesterday when I walked through. The track was clear. So definitely, definitely good job getting out. Getting up early and heading out because that would have been grim trying to deal with all of that. The walk out wasn't that much fun either. That was only a couple of inches of snow. God knows what it would have been like with a foot of snow there. Right, broken the back of it now. It's all downhill from here. It's not snowy in here. Obviously, it helps a lot. Walking down here covered in snow would be treacherous because you stand on one of these roots, stick up, and you go flying. You're just a passenger. It doesn't matter what you're on. I've taken the spikes off my boots. Don't need them down here. These boots actually, incidentally, are these are lower hunter extremes. So they're insulated. So they're really nice and warm. I mean I couldn't feel my feet for the first 20 minutes because I put them on. They were frozen but now they're so warm. I actually broke these boots in coming up here a few years ago. I think it might have been three or four years ago. So they've done very, very well. Might need a resole soon. I've worn them quite a bit but we'll wait and see. Anyway, that's my view now. More of this, another hour odd of that, and some steep bits which I'll probably fall flat on my arse. But yeah, heading back to the car. Nice echo in here. Might stop halfway and have a snack but I'd really rather just get in the car and change of clothes. I'm well down now, well below the snow. So roughly 500 meters now and I should have shown you this on the way up but the wind that comes through here sometimes knocks these beech trees over. They're pretty shallow rooted. These ones happened about a year ago. There was a massive storm that came through and some of these are immense. You can see they've been trimmed by a chainsaw. I came up here shortly after the windfall and couldn't get through really. It took us about two hours. I think I was with Luke, my nephew, and we got lost trying to find the track but we knew where the ridge was, we knew where the river was, so we got there in the end. This isn't the worst of it. I'll show you in a bit. There's the absolute definition of the chaos theory further down here where just everything went down and that was an absolute nightmare to get through. I'll show you that in a bit. Trees are creaking here. Some widow makers up there ready to fall in this wind so I need to get out of here. This is what I was talking about with this massive windfall that happened that I got completely turned around in with my nephew. The definition of the chaos theory as I said. I'll find a way to show you what this looks like but I can't even imagine the gust of wind that came through here and tore those beech trees. It's just devastation. You shouldn't be able to see any light in here. It should be nice and dark but just everything ripped to pieces. It's really localized in this little spot. Makes you wonder if a twister just out of nowhere. Look at these trees uprooted and then these trees are just snapped. Insane. Can you imagine being here when that happened and you were walking on the track. Now the track actually cuts through the middle of that lot. They had to mark a new track around the side but just imagine how scary that would have been and the noise and how dead you would have been. Pretty nuts. Looking for a snack. It just started raining. Must be snow up the top. I'm in my OSM bar. Got a bottle of Gatorade there that I'm gonna chug as well. It's pretty grim. I'm glad I got off. It just was getting worse and worse. I've camped at the, well camped, stopped at the bit I was talking about where everything just collapsed. Quite amazing. The power of mother nature. At the bottom you can hear the roar of the river down there. I've also got a stream down here that I have to cross. The stream has risen a bit and when I came up it, or crossed it to come up, it was already higher than normal and slipped a little bit. Almost went in. There's no bridges, foot bridges or anything like that up here on the Jameson Ridge. I don't know why. Wouldn't take much to put a little bridge in. But everything is soaked. I'm soaked. Everything is slippery as hell. Look at that. That's the stream I've got to cross. It's easy from here but there's only one bit you can do it in which is right down the bottom there. Everywhere else is vertical. So let me just get there and see if we can. That's where I meant to cross but those rocks are so slippery. Looks like it's a bit easier to cross through here and then walk up to the track. I can just walk across and not forget wet boots. But the thought of falling off one of those rocks. No thanks. A lot easier. A lot easier. Didn't fancy that. I reckon I was in. Right 10 minutes to the car. Done. Just got to cross over this little thing. That car is over there. That's the road just over there. No easy feat climbing this with a massive pack on. So I'm being dive-bombed by a fantail. Highlight of the trip. I think walking through the snow is amazing. It's beautiful. I did see some deer tracks on the way down but didn't see a deer. Even if I did, my rifle was up in my pack now. Couldn't be bothered to hand carry it. It was a great trip. Shame it was only one night but I wasn't going to risk it with a storm and there's actually a little bit of sun coming through. It is not like that up there though. Up there it's grim and constant snow. I don't think my gear would be able to handle it and also it just wouldn't be much fun and it's not the sort of thing I want to do alone either. I'd rather have someone there to share the pain with me. So I'm out and yeah sun's shining. It's bizarre. It's raining and the sun is shining. So I'm out of the Jameson Ridge track. So that was a bit over two hours coming down. I was taking my time. It's quite slippery. It was three hours up. Maybe just over three hours actually but I was carrying a lot of gear. I've got to climb over another one of these things carefully. Yeah it's just over three hours and I've got a 20 kilo pack so the mole hut was just down the bottom. There's the sign. Jameson Ridge track, mole hut, four and a half hours. No way. It wasn't gonna take me four and a half hours. Now back to the car. Nice and dry. Change your clothes. Get the hell out of here. This is the road. It's a dirt road really. I'm going over there towards the sun. Can't wait. Get home, shower and a hot tub. See ya.